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Calgary Performing Arts Festival

Over 3,700 performances involving 10,000 amateur performers makes the Calgary Performing Arts Festival (formerly the Kiwanis Festival) one of North America's largest! The Festival gives performers a unique opportunity to receive feedback from arts professionals and learn from their peers.

Our Impact

What We Do

With each annual Festival, we aspire to introduce a new generation of amateur artists to the joys of performance! Our Festival is one of the city’s highest profile arts and culture events with over 10,000 performers taking part each year.

The Festival began in 1931 with just over 200 entries and has since grown into one of North America’s largest amateur performing arts festivals. Our mission is to encourage amateur performance in our community.

We do this by producing a three-week Festival each year to showcase the talents of approximately 10,000 young musicians, singers and drama students in over 3,700 performances. There over 15 performance categories including school bands, Chinese ethnic instruments, choral music, drama, guitar, musical theatre, piano, strings and woodwind to name just a few.

For over 80 years the Festival has focused on expanding our categories so that we continue to reflect performance trends and the interests of our audience. Most recently in 2015, Festival added a popular guitar category to encourage students who are learning to play the guitar but are not interested in classical music. New classes for Chinese ethnic instruments were added a few years ago and prove to be very popular. More recently, performance piano, which is non-competitive and non-adjudicated, was added to give participants an opportunity to gain confidence from the experience of public performance without the pressure of being marked.

A very important aspect of Festival for many young performers is the adjudication. We invite adjudicators, well-respected within in their field, to offer constructive oral and written feedback with the intention of nurturing the budding talent and growing passion for performance.

Outside of Festival time, we host concerts and collaborate with local performing arts organizations so that we may provide Festival participants with additional opportunities to perform publicly and share their passion for the arts.

Our Programs

How We Do It

Our Festival is generally held over a three-week period with classes running daily from 9:00a.m. – 9:00 p.m. on eight different stages throughout the Mount Royal University campus. Classes vary and could consist of four elementary school choirs all singing two selections for the adjudicator in a large concert hall; or it could be a small group of grade three piano students, each playing a solo piece from the classical era; or it could be 15 musical theatre performers coming together to perform five different trios from Broadway plays.

We cover a wide range of performance categories and all are judged by renowned adjudicators from across North America such as Ray Luck, Zoltan Szabo, and Barbara Collier. These professionals share their knowledge and expertise with the students, providing valuable learning experiences for all. Each performance, whether it is a soloist or an entire group will receive both a written and oral adjudication pointing out what they did well and areas where they could still make some improvements.

While most classes are competitive, the Festival also offers many non-competitive classes where students receive the same written and oral comments from the adjudicator but no marks are given.

Public performance: There is no fee to come out and enjoy the classes and we invite Calgarians to come out and support our up and coming musicians and actors. Several public concerts annually are hosted annually (Stars of the Festival, Musical Theatre Showcase, Speech Performers Showcase) featuring top performers heard and seen at that year’s Festival.

Media coverage: The Festival and its performers are well loved by local media and their readers and are regularly featured in print, radio and TV broadcasts around Festival time and throughout the year.

Scholarships: Each year approximately $55,000 is awarded in scholarships to help nurture emerging artists and encourage the continued pursuit of their studies.

Continued growth: Festival aspires to introduce a new generation of Calgarians to the joys of performance by:

Expanding outreach efforts directed at private music teachers and their students, who account for a large number of participants in the Festival.

Creating more non-competitive/non-adjudicated classes in disciplines in addition to piano.

Establishing new partnerships with local performing arts organizations and cultural groups in order to reach more performers and increase the number of opportunities for Festival participants to perform.

Continuing to create new classes and expanding performance categories based on the students’ needs and interests.

Donations: Help cover the costs associated with venue rentals, adjudication fees and expenses, and the scholarships awarded by giving what you can.

Corporate and title sponsors: Festival requires more corporate sponsors who wish to support a well-loved community arts organization. Sponsorship levels range from $2,500 to $20,000 to a title sponsorship opportunity. Interested in becoming a corporate sponsor? Find out the benefits of doing so by requesting a sponsorship package by email or call Young-Mi Kwon at 403.283-6009 ext 425.

Festival Volunteers Needed! If you have some time to share and would like to become a volunteer,please contact the office at 403-283-6009 ext 423 or send email to aly@cpafestival.ca. Each year we require more than 100 volunteers who dedicate approximately 2,500 hours of time to help produce the Festival. Volunteers are essential to our operation. With thousands of performances over the three-week Festival, we cannot mount this Festival without you!

Board Members: We are always accepting applications for our board positions. Our board members are dedicated to finhttp://mailto@ym@cpafestival.cading new sources of funding for the Festival and ensuring strong governance so that our organization may continue to make such strong contributions to the local arts community. Please contact our Executive Director, Young-Mi Kwon at ym@cpafestival.ca